Monday, 22 April 2013

Mitchell & Butler Strong Ale and Stout 1926 – 1954

More M & B. I forgot to mention that these are all beers that were brewed at Cape Hill which, in the 1980's, was the largest producer of cask beer in the world. Long gone now, of course, having closed in 2002. Though the name Mitchell & Butler lives on as a pub chain.

Stout. There's loads of rubbish been written about British Stouts after WW I. Mostly about them all being sweet. M & B's Stouts show how wrong that generalisation is. In the 1920's and 1930's, with attenuation over 80%, M & B's Stouts would have been drier than Guinness. The attenuation fell a bit after WW II, but was still mostly hovering close to 80%.

There's limited data, but it looks to me like we've an example of style splitting with Nourishing Stout and Extra Stout. The date where Extra Stout appears is important, 1932. That's in the chaotic period of an unwise jump in beer tax between 1931 and 1933. It was a disaster all round. Brewers dropped gravities to keep the retail price the same and the tax collected fell.

What some breweries did, when they perceived a demand for a beer at the old strength, was to introduce a "new" product, that was basically the old beer, just with a new name. Barclay Perkins did this with their Mild, introducing XX Ale at the same strength as X Ale had been before the gravity drop. Extra Stout looks like one of these beers. Look how the gravity of Nourishing Stout fell from 1048º to 1043º and Extra Stout appears at 1049º.

I'm astonished to see that M& B's two Stouts not only survived the war, but remained at pretty much the same gravities. I'm struggling to think of any other beer - export versions excepted - where that's true.

That Amba is a funny one: a pale Old Ale. Old Ale was popular in the West Midlands before WW II - still is to some extent. But it's usually a dark beer. Always, really. It would be great to know more about the beer's history.

And blow me if there isn't another beer that's the same gravity either side of WW II, Strong Ale. (I've just thought of another example. Seeing that 1106 OG has reminded me: Barclay's Russian Stout. That managed to navigate both World Wars with no drop in gravity.) It's a pretty powerful beer, with a decent attenuation for such a high gravity

You're probably thinking (hoping?) that this series is over now. It isn't, there's more M & B to come.

Mitchell & Butler Strong Ale and Stout 1926 –
1954

Year

Beer

Style

Price

size

package

Acidity

FG

OG

colour

ABV

App. Atten-uation

1926

Nourishing Stout

Stout

8d

pint

bottled

1048.7

1929

Nourishing Stout

Stout

8.5d

pint

bottled

0.07

1006.3

1048.4

5.5

86.98%

1931

Nourishing Stout

Stout

9d

pint

bottled

1005

1046.1

5.4

89.15%

1932

Nourishing Stout

Stout

9d

pint

bottled

0.06

1006.7

1043

4.7

84.42%

1932

Extra Stout

Stout

8d

pint

bottled

0.06

1006.8

1049

5.5

86.12%

1951

Nourishing Stout

Stout

1/5d

pint

bottled

0.04

1007.4

1042.8

1 + 10

4.6

82.71%

1951

Extra Stout

Stout

10.5d

half

bottled

0.04

1009

1048

1 + 9

5.1

81.25%

1951

Nourishing Stout

Stout

1/6d

pint

bottled

0.07

1007.3

1042.1

1 + 12

4.5

82.66%

1953

Nourishing Stout

Stout

10d

half

bottled

0.06

1006.5

1039.2

1 + 11

4.3

83.42%

1953

Extra Stout

Stout

1/-

half

bottled

0.05

1008.2

1049

1 + 11

5.3

83.27%

1953

Extra Stout

Stout

1/-

half

bottled

0.05

1009.8

1046.2

21 B

4.7

78.79%

1954

Extra Stout

Stout

1/-

half

bottled

0.05

1011.2

1049

1 + 14

4.9

77.14%

1962

Extra Nourishing
Stout

Stout

13d

half

bottled

0.05

1012.2

1037.1

275

3.1

67.12%

1960

Export Lager

Lager

16d

half

bottled

0.02

1010

1039.7

7.5

3.7

74.81%

1958

Amba Pale Old Ale

Old Ale

15d

nip

bottled

0.04

1012.4

1056.3

18

5.5

77.98%

1932

Strong Ale

Strong Ale

10d

half

bottled

0.12

1023.9

1108

11.1

77.87%

1935

Strong Ale

Strong Ale

9d

half

bottled

0.11

1022.7

1109

11.4

79.17%

1953

Strong Ale

Strong Ale

2/4d

half

bottled

0.19

1026.5

1106

6 + 40

10.5

75.00%

Sources:

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/001

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002

10 comments:

I watched the Morse prequel Endeavour last night. In one scene, the young Morse is dead on his feet and the inspector offers him a glass of brandy but his wife overrules him and fetches a bottle of stout from the cupboard to "build him up".

The second brewer at Tetley Walkers in Warrington told me their brewery was the largest ale brewery in the UK in the early nineties and that was pretty much all cask. Do you have any figures for the two breweries?

you're right to call me out on that one, because I don't have a proper source for that claim. It's just something I remember from What's Brewing or the Good Beer Guide.

Figures for output per brewery in the UK aren't that easy to come by. I should know, I hunt these things. Even with those numbers, working out how much cask was brewed wouldn't be easy, unless the brewery itself kept track and the records are preserved.

Tetley in Leeds must have been well up there as well. They brewed a lot of cask beer.